Chris Whiteside is the Conservative County Councillor for the Egremont North and St Bees Division of Cumbria County Council. The division includes St Bees, most of Moor Row, Bigrigg, Wood End, part of the Mirehouse area of Whitehaven, and the surrounding countryside.
Chris lives and works in Copeland with his wife and family.
Chris is a former member of Copeland Borough council, and an Honorary Alderman of the City and District of St Albans.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Good things which happened in 2016

On this last day of 2016 there has been a lot of comment on social media by people who are glad to see the back of this year.

For those who have lost loved ones, either to accident, natural causes, or terrorist attack, I fully understand why they would feel that way.

I can also understand that many people are very unhappy about one or more of the controversial election or referendum results of 2016.

But none of these things are the whole story of what has been happening to the world in 2016.

I've already posted about the fact that by a miracle of modern medical science I have had my vision corrected and can now see as well, in some ways better, without strong glasses or contact lenses as I could see at the start of 2016 and for nearly fifty years before that with them.

Courtesy of Tim Montgomerie @Montie and Johan Norberg @Johanknorberg, here are a few more good things which happened or continued in 2016:

A continuing reduction in the number of deaths and infections from HIV/AIDS

A continuing reduction in the number of deaths and infections from malaria

A continuing reduction in hunger, poverty, illiteracy, and suffering over the last 25 years

The people in the UK these days who we class as those in extreme poverty actually live far more luxurious lives than former kings and queens did.

Its not like we need to hire all the staff to spend 7 hours at the river to wash our clothes, or need to muck out the latrine buckets is it.

If you really do think about it, we live a far more luxurious existence than our parents, who in turn live or lived a far more luxurious on than their parents.

Our grandparents used to take a weekend in Blackpool as a nice holiday, we feel hard done by when we cant get an all inclusive fortnight in Barbados. Medical advances will always mean that diseases are finally beaten, hey one day we may even have the ever elusive "cure for cancer" (though we are a damned site closer to that than we were 5 years agp.)

it pretty much goes that each and every year, on the grand scheme of things, things improve. The thing that off sets it is that every year expectations increase.

Its the same with things like government spending, once spending on something starts, then its quite difficult (politically) to stop it. Evil cuts etc, yet had the spending never started few would have asked for it.